It has become common to treat a variety of medical conditions by temporarily or permanently introducing an implantable medical device partly or completely into the esophagus, trachea, colon, biliary tract, urinary tract, vascular system or other location within a human or veterinary patient. Many treatments of the vascular or other systems entail the introduction of a device such as a stent, a catheter, a balloon, a wire guide, a cannula or the like. For this purpose, a stent may most simply be considered as a cylinder of relatively short length which opens a body passage or lumen or which maintains a body passage or lumen in an open condition.
Such medical devices are generally capable of serving their intended purposes quite well. Some drawbacks can be encountered during their use, however. For example, when a device is introduced into and manipulated through the vascular system of a patient, the blood vessel walls can be disturbed or injured. Clot formation or thrombosis often results at the injured site, causing stenosis (closure) of the blood vessel. Moreover, if the medical device is left within the patient for an extended period of time, thrombus often forms on the device itself, again causing stenosis. As a result, the patient is placed at risk of a variety of complications, including heart attack, pulmonary embolism, and stroke. Thus, the use of such a medical device can entail the risk of precisely the problems that its use was intended to ameliorate.
Another way in which blood vessels undergo stenosis is through disease. Probably the most common disease causing stenosis of blood vessels is atherosclerosis. Many medical devices and therapeutic methods are known for the treatment of atherosclerotic disease. One particularly useful therapy for certain atherosclerotic lesions is percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA). During PTA, a balloon-tipped catheter is inserted in a patient's artery, the balloon being deflated. The tip of the catheter is advanced to the site of the atherosclerotic plaque to be dilated. The balloon is placed within or across the stenotic segment of the artery, and then inflated. Inflation of the balloon “cracks” the atherosclerotic plaque and expands the vessel, thereby relieving the stenosis, at least in part.
While PTA presently enjoys wide use, it suffers from two major problems. First, the blood vessel may suffer acute occlusion immediately after or within the initial hours after the dilation procedure. Such occlusion is referred to as “abrupt closure.” Abrupt closure occurs in perhaps five percent or so of the cases in which PTA is employed, and can result in myocardial infarction and death if blood flow is not restored promptly. The primary mechanisms of abrupt closures are believed to be elastic recoil, arterial dissection and/or thrombosis. It has been postulated that the delivery of an appropriate agent (such as an antithrombic) directly into the arterial wall at the time of angioplasty could reduce the incidence of thrombotic acute closure, but the results of attempts to do so have been mixed.
A second major problem encountered in PTA is the re-narrowing of an artery after an initially successful angioplasty. This re-narrowing is referred to as “restenosis” and typically occurs within the first six months after angioplasty. Restenosis is believed to arise through the proliferation and migration of cellular components from the arterial wall, as well as through geometric changes in the arterial wall referred to as “remodeling.” It has similarly been postulated that the delivery of appropriate agents directly into the arterial wall could interrupt the cellular and/or remodeling events leading to restenosis. However, like the attempts to prevent thrombotic acute closure, the results of attempts to prevent restenosis in this manner have been mixed.
Non-atherosclerotic vascular stenosis may also be treated by PTA. For example, Takayasu arteritis or neurofibromatosis may cause stenosis by fibrotic thickening of the arterial wall. Restenosis of these lesions occurs at a high rate following angioplasty, however, due to the fibrotic nature of the diseases. Medical therapies to treat or obviate them have been similarly disappointing.
A device such as an intravascular stent can be a useful adjunct to PTA, particularly in the case of either acute or threatened closure after angioplasty. The stent is placed in the dilated segment of the artery to mechanically prevent abrupt closure and restenosis. Unfortunately, even when the implantation of the stent is accompanied by aggressive and precise antiplatelet and anticoagulation therapy (typically by systemic administration), the incidence of thrombotic vessel closure or other thrombotic complication remains significant, and the prevention of restenosis is not as successful as desired. Furthermore, an undesirable side effect of the systemic antiplatelet and anticoagulation therapy is an increased incidence of bleeding complications, most often at the percutaneous entry site.
Other conditions and diseases are treatable with stents, catheters, cannulae and other medical devices inserted into the esophagus, trachea, colon, biliary tract, urinary tract and other locations in the body. A wide variety of bioactive materials (drugs, therapeutic agents, diagnostic agents and other materials having biological or pharmacological activity within a patient) have been applied to such medical devices for the purpose of introducing such materials into the patient. Unfortunately, the durable application of bioactive materials to stents and the like, sufficient for such introduction to successfully occur, is often problematic. A range of containment or layering materials have been applied to such devices to permit the timed release of bioactive materials from such devices, or even to permit bioactive materials to be applied to such devices at all. Unfortunately, the use of such containment materials can significantly increase the time and cost of manufacturing suitable implantable devices. Moreover, some bioactive materials may not be able to withstand incorporation in known containment materials. Additionally, certain containment materials may not be biocompatible and may cause problems of the type desired to be reduced.
It would be desirable to develop devices and methods for reliably delivering suitable therapeutic and diagnostic agents, drugs and other bioactive materials directly into a body portion during or following a medical procedure, so as to treat or prevent the conditions and diseases mentioned above, for example, to prevent abrupt closure and/or restenosis of a body portion such as a passage, lumen or blood vessel. It would also be desirable to limit systemic exposure of the patient to such bioactive materials. This would be particularly advantageous in therapies involving the delivery of a chemotherapeutic agent to a particular organ or site through an intravenous catheter (which itself has the advantage of reducing the amount of agent needed for successful treatment), by preventing stenosis both along the catheter and at the catheter tip. It would be desirable to similarly improve other therapies. Of course, it would also be desirable to avoid degradation of the agent, drug or bioactive material during its incorporation on or into any such device. It would further be highly desirable to develop a method for coating an implantable medical device with a drug, therapeutic agent, diagnostic agent or other bioactive material which entailed a minimum number of steps, thereby reducing the ultimate cost of treating the patient.
It would be desirable to deliver the bioactive material without causing additional problems with a poor biocompatible carrier or containment material. Finally, it would be highly desirable to develop a method for coating an implantable medical device with a drug, therapeutic agent, diagnostic agent or other bioactive material which could be carried out in such a way as to minimize any environmental or personal risks or inconveniences associated with the manufacture of the device.